Amazing Avanti

The goal of building a concours-restored 1963 Studebaker Avanti took more than a decade to achieve

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

What could you accomplish in 14 years? Maybe go to medical school, do your internship and residency, then turn right around and head to law school. Or you could set out to undertake an absolutely flawless restoration of an indisputably historic car, one little task at a time.
Many long-term restorations originally started out as nothing more than a pile of parts, which is why they took so long to complete. Here, however, the task involved a car that was a little used up but still nearly 100 percent complete. It was a case of complete completeness, you could conclude. A key factor in the case of this unusual 1963 Studebaker Avanti is that its owner was unwavering in his determination that no matter what, time and money considered, this car was going to be perfect by every objective measure.
It deserved to be. It's an R1, meaning it was built with the non-supercharged version of the 289-cu.in. Studebaker V-8. Most of the 3,834 Avantis that came from South Bend in 1963 used either three-speed automatics or four-speed manual transmissions. This one, however, has a floor-shifted three-speed manual with no synchro on the bottom gear.
To provide some context, we spoke to Avanti historian George Krem of Berthoud, Colorado, who contributed production data and analysis to the book, The Studebaker Avanti, newly published by the Studebaker National Museum. Of total Avanti production in 1963, just 67 were built with three-speeds. "It's a pretty common transmission, but the Avanti certainly is different by having it."
There's another eye-popper here. Augustino Capasso, who lives in Roseland, New Jersey, had never owned a collector car before he took on this Avanti. "First old car? Yes, first one I'd ever owned. It was my dream. I'd been a guest judge at Thunderbird shows a couple of times; they said I was good at it. I'm very fussy." We can believe it: We never saw him touch the exterior of this car without wearing cotton gloves. Not once.
When Augustino found the Avanti 22 years ago in Hemmings Motor News, it was sitting in a garage in Barnstable, Massachusetts, a little town on Cape Cod. "The person who had it up in Cape Cod was the third owner, and was using it as a guide to restore another Avanti, because this car was completely original, not altered or damaged in any way. It had some weak spots. The chrome was a little tarnished, the carpeting was drying out and the clutch was bad. But it was still the perfect specimen, physically, to copy details for another restoration."
Let's make it clear that neither Augustino nor the earlier owner were using this Avanti as a parts car. He bought it 22 years ago as "a good 20-footer that was winning second and third place at AACA regional meets even back then."
With so few qualified restorers near his New Jersey home, Augustino had to go to the other side of the state to get the Avanti done, calling on widely known Grey Hills Auto Restorations in Blairstown--regrettably, it's not there any more. The job started back in 1997 with a meeting, where Augustino set down his goal of having a "101 percent" standard of perfection.
It was a good place to start. This Avanti was complete. Nothing, even small components, had to be sourced or otherwise hunted down. Of course, that didn't mitigate the complexity or lengthiness of Grey Hills' work. "We spent two years in a complete state of disassembly. Then we had a complete engine rebuild, even though the engine had good compression and didn't need it. Same for the transmission. (According to Andrew Beckman, archivist for the Studebaker National Museum, it's the Borg-Warner AS2-10, non-synchronized on first gear.) We also balanced the driveshaft. The frame was put in a jig and all the imperfections, any spattered weld marks, were taken out, 100 percent. Every suspension part was taken off and redone, fully powdercoated."
The Avanti tips in at around 3,800 pounds and a high percentage of that is due to all that fiberglass above its steel frame. Like most fiberglass cars of its age, the glass had to be laid on so thick that it became prone to stress and cracking in critical spots. Some common places to watch, George outlined, include the roof area above the rear side window, the rocker panels and the rear area of the front fenders, near the forward edge of the doors. All are prone to hairline splits, or worse.
As with other fiberglass sports cars, the Avanti's material identity doesn't equal total imperviousness to corrosion. The Avanti rides on a reinforced version of the already beefy X-frame that Studebaker used for the Lark convertible of the same era. Among the strengthened areas is the frame's rear, fitted with a tubular steel crossmember about 2.5 inches in diameter. As George explained, spray can get inside fairly easily, causing rust. There are also two lateral underbody torque boxes at about the car's midpoint that Studebaker fans call the "hog troughs," made of sheetmetal; they're another location where rust can be prevalent. Replacements exist, but can cost more than $1,600 if made of stainless steel.
Augustino's car was free of rust, but he had Grey Hills take everything down to the last nut and bolt and start rebuilding the car from there. He had a roll of plastic sheet to protect the car when he rolled it from the trailer to the shop and would not take the finished body out on a windy day, lest the paint be marred by flying branches or twigs. That's cotton-glove attentiveness.
"When you restore a car like this, what you've got to understand is that really, it's all labor," Augustino told us. "It's got a fiberglass body that's really heavy. It took a long time to take it all the way down to the bare glass and refinish it."
Having an all-numbers-matching Avanti, Augustino wanted to perfect its as-built plumage, inside and out, which represents a rarity beyond the transmission's. Analyzing the production documents, George revealed that in 1963, Studebaker built 273 Avantis with the color combination of white exterior and red Deluxe vinyl interior; the Deluxe upholstery was distinguished by its vertical pleats. Factor in the three-speed transmission and that production number likely gets a lot smaller. Augustino said some people have told him the total build for this color, trim and powertrain may have been just seven or eight units. We're in no position to argue.
The whole job took 14 years. "I'm not going to name a price because that would be totally rude, but it got so expensive, and took so long, that we had to do it in steps. It just got away from me," Augustino said. "I mean, I had a daughter in college. Grey Hills did everything except the upholstery. The upholstery was finished by Jerry Ambrosi at Master Upholstery in Newton, New Jersey. We got the right Deluxe vinyl pleat patterns for the upholstery from SMS Auto Fabrics in Oregon; I ordered a whole roll of it. I managed to find a reproduction headliner. Jerry used the correct cotton stitching, not nylon, and used the old interior as a pattern to determine the right amount of foam padding and so forth."
Only the dashboard was left in the car, but the Stewart-Warner gauges were removed, restored and had their contact points renewed. The body was hand-sanded--no media blasting here--and got a new gel coat before receiving two coats of Du Pont Centari acrylic enamel, with no clearcoat, as keeping with Studebaker practice. The engine and Carter AFB carburetor were both restored, even though the car had traveled barely 54,000 miles.
Parts-sourcing headaches, George told us, tend to involve obscure stuff. "The sunvisors are an odd shape, just molded foam with some kind of color sprayed onto them, with a rod running through them and a screw. They don't pivot to the side. They've been NLA, no longer available, for a long time," he said. "Across the inside of the roof, covering the inside of the roll bar, is a decorative cover that just clips on. If it were damaged, it might be a problem because it has a contour. The Studebaker emblem on the trunk has been a very scarce item for a long time. At a meet, it's rather expensive. Almost all mechanical parts, though, are readily available, and used in many other Studebakers, either original or NOS. It's the body parts that tend to be more rare."
Augustino describes his Avanti as "over-, over-, over-restored. I drive it maybe 10 miles a year." To nobody's surprise, it easily racked up an AACA Grand National at last year's meet in New Bern, North Carolina. Quite a debut for a guy who'd never owned an old car before.
"When I was a kid, I always admired the Avanti. When it was new, it didn't cost much less than a new two-door Cadillac, so it was something that was totally out of reach for a young guy," Augustino explained. "The only two cars I ever really wanted were the Avanti and the 1957 De Soto Adventurer, but the De Sotos are all rust buckets. It's very hard to get those Chrysler cars from the 1950s in any other condition. My wife, Jean, always gives me funny looks about it, like I couldn't have picked a Corvette or something else that was easier to restore."
Still, we think the cotton-glove treatment is worth it, 101 percent.
Owner's View
When you restore a car like this, what you've got to understand is that, really, it's all labor. It's got a fiberglass body that's really heavy. It took a long time to take it all the way down to the bare glass and refinish it.

This article originally appeared in the August, 2011 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.